The plug-and-play TV game Big Buck Hunter Pro ($59.99 list) from Jakks Pacific is rated Teen by the ESRB, but I thought my six-year-old son would enjoy it, since he loves a similar game called Chicken Shoot that he plays on his Nintendo Wii. The game doesn't come close to being as fun as Chicken Shoot, but that had nothing to do with his age.

Big Buck Hunter is a port of the arcade/bar gaming machine of the same name. This home version includes a rifle and shot sensor that you place above your TV. It requires four double-A and three triple-A batteries, which are not included.

Getting this finicky game to work correctly is a chore. We tried it on two different TVs and had problems with both. With our 42-inch plasma, we had a difficult time getting the shot sensor to stay on top of the thin TV. It kept falling off until we finally got some two sided tape.

Once setup was squared away, we found it difficult to get the rifle's sight to show up at the bottom of the screen. The sight would appear fine when it was near the top of the screen or in the middle, but whenever we had to shoot something at the bottom, the sight would disappear. We kept backing up and recalibrating the rifle, but it never worked well.

We then tried playing Big Buck Huner on a 32-inch CRT TV. This time we were able to back up far enough so that the rifle registered everywhere on the screen. Unfortunately, at that distance, the sight becomes jittery. This could be because of unsteady hands, but it seemed to be more than that.

With the setup issues aside, once we played, we had some fun. Shooting the deer wasn't all that exciting for me and my son, but the included bonus games were entertaining.

Post by Tim Smith